What's on TV tonight: The Apprentice, Horizon: The Truth About Personality and Restoration Home

Our pick of the best shows on the box for Wednesday, July 10 - plus our at a glance soaps round-up

Luisa Zissman being interviewed by Claude Littner during the latest episode of The Apprentice

The Apprentice (9pm BBC1)

If any of our over-confident candidates were pitching a business that would run self esteem workshops, they’d be laughing. Unfortunately they’re not.

Tonight, having jumped through all the flaming hoops of the past ten weeks and survived such epic fails as Vase-gate and The Away Day To Hell, now somebody is actually going to read their business plans and expose some of them at least as the deluded ninnies we’ve always suspected them to be.

It’s the interview round in which the final five are interrogated by Margaret Mountford, free newspaper boss Mike Soutar, plus a new addition to the line-up media planning boss Claudine Collins. But the most ferocious of all of these is of course Claude Littner.

We’ve all seen this interview round before, but I have to say that what you’re about to witness tonight ranks as by far the bloodiest episode ever. I genuinely fear for the well-being of one candidate after Claude chews them up and spits them out.

Contestants on Total Wipeout have had a more comfortable, less bruising ride than this.

But you’ve got to expect to be torn to pieces when your business plan mentions your “voluminous hair” or you admit that your turnover is a figure plucked out of thin air.

Watching Leah inform Mike Soutar how many injections of Botox and cosmetic fillers he needs is also something of a first.

I do have to defend Neil though. Claude Littner is convinced that a website that lets people bypass estate agency fees by selling their own houses is a terrible idea.

He should know that not only does an online estate agency like this already exist, I sold my house on it.

Horizon: The Truth About Personality (9pm BBC2)

Don’t worry – be happy.

That was the working title for this programme, because one study has shown that optimistic people live, on average, seven and a half years longer.

Of course, if you’re a glass half-empty person you could argue this just proves the pessimists were right all along. They were worried something would happen to them – and it did.

Despite having fronted several programmes about sleep, presenter Michael Mosley admits to being an insomniac and naturally anxious and tonight he tries some exercises to retrain his brain to think more positively.

There is no “Truth About Personality” of course, just a lot of theories and Mosley investigates some new ones and some very old ones too.

We probably don’t need Horizon to suggest meditation might make us calmer, but here’s a scientific measure of how well it actually works.

Restoration Home (8pm BBC2)

The usual building blocks of this series, and all the others like it, are disaster and stress. But Alex, who has just bought a 200-year-old Georgian wreck with her husband Martin, isn’t playing that game.

The walls of her dream home are so unstable, they’re bowing and the beams are rotting.

But Alex isn’t bothered by any of this. She’s too busy choosing the wallpaper.

Alex is the most hilariously optimistic renovator I’ve ever seen. Her mantra throughout is: “It’s all going to be fine,” as though she’d already fast-forwarded through to the end of the programme.

This is how you do a property renovation, then. You hire a specialist builder and an architect, chuck some money at it and leave them to get on with it while you’re 150 miles away pottering happily about with your mood boards.

SOAP ROUND-UP

Emmerdale (7pm ITV)

Laurel is still shaken up after her terrifying ordeal yesterday – and even more so when she finds her stolen car parked outside Cain’s garage.

She’s angry at Cain for buying a stolen car, and even angrier at Marlon for not standing up to him. But dare Laurel break the Dingle code by dobbing Cain in to the police?

Coronation Street (7.30pm ITV)

When Katy fell for Ryan, one of the big attractions was that he represented a break from the drudgery of motherhood.

So she shouldn’t be too surprised to discover that he’s not remotely interested in staying home every night with a young child. Or as he so charmingly puts it tonight: “I wanted you – not you and your stupid kid.”

Send a story

Advertising Department

Trinity Mirror Merseyside, the Echo's parent company, is one of the North West’s largest multimedia providers reaching more than 900,000 adults every month.

The Liverpool Echo, Trinity Mirror Merseyside’s flagship brand, is the area’s best-read newspaper including national newspapers.

The Liverpool Echo reaches 1 in 3 people in the area with a daily readership of more than 256,000* people.The Liverpool Echo website reaches 1.5 million unique users each month who look at around 8.5 million pages**.

The Editor

Alastair Machray

Alastair Machray was appointed editor of The Liverpool Echo in 2005 and is also editor-in-chief of Trinity Mirror Merseyside, Cheshire and North Wales. He is a former editor of The Daily Post (Wales and England) and editor-in-chief of the company's Welsh operations. Married dad-of-two and keen golfer Alastair is one of the longest-serving newspaper editors in the country. His titles have won numerous awards and spearheaded numerous successful campaigns.